Nov 20, 2023

News Briefs SoundHound AI Debuts Employee Assist Voice AI Product for Restaurants SoundHound AI Inc. is now offering Employee Assist , a new state-of-the-art conversational AI product that supports restaurant employees by allowing them to instantly learn critical information about food, tasks, and other operations without having to reach for a manual or distract another busy member of staff. Employee Assist is a voice AI technology that enables restaurant employees from both the front and back-of-house to ask a custom-trained voice assistant critical questions – and get immediate responses – completely hands-free. Easily accessible via a headset or tablet, this groundbreaking product uses SoundHound’s voice AI with generative AI capabilities to learn and understand instruction manuals, ingredient and allergen information and more. It then relays this knowledge directly to employees via their headsets as part of a fluid two-way conversation, with the system able to answer any question (and follow-up questions). This new automation tool helps restaurant workers access the information they need instantly – even if they’re new on the job. Employee Assist requests may include: Information about food and drink items – including ingredients, allergens, and coaching on preparation Business FAQs – like opening hours, holiday closures, baby changing or disabled facilities Updates on the managers log and important daily tasks to be completed Employee Assist helps restaurant operators reduce the natural friction that comes with inexperienced and multitasking employees trying to complete orders. Now they can be coached step-by-step by Employee Assist – avoiding the need to remove their gloves, consult a manual, or distract another employee. The technology also understands natural human speech without employees having to modify the way they talk. A recent SoundHound consumer study found that technology is now one of the top three most critical factors driving restaurant customer satisfaction. 11/16/2023 Checkers & Rally's Adds New Executives Checkers & Rally's announced the appointment of Michael Blair as Chief Financial Officer and Scott Johnson as Chief Marketing Officer. In their respective roles, Blair and Johnson will help fuel growth in the business, focusing on driving profitability, guest engagement and continued expansion of the brand. Blair and Johnson will report to Checkers & Rally’s President and CEO, Frances Allen. Blair brings significant CFO experience within the restaurant industry both nationally and internationally, with deep cross-functional knowledge leading finance and accounting, payroll, risk management, human resources, legal, and IT departments during his career. Most recently, he served as the Chief Financial & Administrative Officer at Miller’s Ale House. Prior to Miller’s Ale House, Mr. Blair spent nine years with Bloomin’ Brands in a variety of Finance roles including Director of FP&A at Outback Steakhouse before transitioning to Bloomin’ Brands International. In his final two years with Bloomin’ Brands, Blair served as their International CFO, overseeing both company and franchise financial performance throughout the world, including in the brand’s markets in China, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Brazil. Johnson brings a wealth of restaurant industry experience, having led marketing teams for Smashburger, BurgerFi, BRAVO!, Bonefish Grill and Outback Steakhouse, among others. He has a proven track record of delivering significant AUV growth through his innovative work in social media and digital commerce, menu development, consumer engagement and other marketing, advertising and PR initiatives. Most recently,  Johnson served as Vice President, Head of Marketing at Jollibee Group of Companies, where he led marketing for Smashburger and JFC North America. Prior to Jollibee Group, Scott served as Vice President, Head of Global Marketing for BurgerFi International, where he transformed the marketing function and helped the chain grow from 65 to 115 units. Mr. Johnson began his career as a brand manager for Arby’s, before eventually becoming Senior Director of Marketing, where he oversaw the national marketing calendar, new product marketing, and brand development for 3,000 locations in 50 states. 11/15/2023 RealTime Reservation Accelerates PMS Connectivity with Hapi Integration Platform Hapi , the hospitality industry’s leading platform for fast and cost-effective connectivity between technology systems, has announced a new integration with RealTime Reservation, a single reservation platform for ancillary revenue. Through the integration, RealTime Reservation can ingest data from the Property Management Systems by writing to a single Hapi API. RealTime Reservation offers properties in the hospitality industry a comprehensive, easy-to-use guest engagement and inventory management tool that can “reserve a moment in real time.” RealTime Reservation’s series of solutions can be purchased separately or as a suite of services, depending on a hotel’s needs. The platform allows guests to book activities, cabanas, amenities, classes, F&B, and more while staff directly control capacity and pricing. Hoteliers can follow the guest journey and upsell to capture revenue pre-arrival and during their stay. With streaming data between RealTime Reservation and the hotel PMS in real time, operators can now instantly send any bookings or cancellations to Hapi, which will forward it to the property’s guest Itinerary systems to view. RealTime Reservation is already taking advantage of the integration to allow guests to see a global itinerary, combining bookings from all the hotel and third-party booking platforms. For example, if a guest booked a poolside cabana, they could now easily view their room booking from the hotel together with their cabana booking through RealTime Reservation. "RealTime Reservation is committed to providing hotels with the technology they need to improve the overall guest experience," said Shawn Tarter, President and Founder of RealTime Reservation. "This integration empowers hoteliers to provide guests with a central location to view their bookings without having to navigate through multiple systems to find their itinerary.” RealTime Reservation is the latest hotel technology solutions provider to turn to  Hapi , a hospitality connectivity platform that exposes event streams and transactional APIs at scale. Hapi aims to help hotel companies innovate faster by removing integration, development and deployment challenges. The secure integration between Hapi and RealTime will allow hoteliers to access critical data in a short amount of time with little to no development work on their end. “Operating on a well-integrated tech stack is critical to improving operational efficiency in hotels today, and we are excited to help partners like RealTime Reservation provide solutions to one of the industry’s top challenges,” said  Luis Segredo , CEO of Hapi. “Hapi has become the de facto API standard for connectivity and we’re proud to be helping hoteliers at corporate levels action their data.”